First and Five, Eight, Ten, or Fifteen

During the game’s early years, football’s rules were virtually identical to those of rugby which did not allow teams to maintain possession from one scrimmage or scrummage to another. When football went down the possession path in 1880, the rule makers assumed that teams possessing the ball would play honorably, punting when they could not advance the ball after a few scrimmages. However, Princeton had other ideas and kept the ball play and after play versus Yale in 1880 and 1881, leading to — www.footballarchaeology.com
A look at the early yardage penalties in football and the evolution of the yardage enforcement on Football Arcaeology